Wedding vows.....

Hmm….now now…..where do I begin…. Its been so long since I exercised my literary skills (you can laugh, I won’t mind).

So what have I been up to?….. As indicated in my previous post that I am treading the path that no man has ever willingly trodden, but inevitably ends up walking.

There comes a time in man’s life when he has to take stock of his life and answer some very serious questions. Such as..

• Do you agree to spend 5 hrs for shopping a tea-cup?
• Do you like to paint your room pink?
• Do you agree to wait for her for 4 hrs to get ready to go to a 30 mins event?
• Do you pretend to like reality shows where repeat offenders and bimbos seek matrimonial alliances?
• Will you stop visiting naughty websites?
• Will you stop ogling at girls, unless specifically asked by her to compare her with the said girl?
• And after comparing, would you agree that she is much better (irrespective of what the comparison was for) than the said girl?

I have somehow worked up the courage to say ‘I do’ to all the above questions and take the big leap.As I mentioned to my lady the other day, the below verse succinctly sums up my life till now and what the future holds for me.

“ನಿನ್ನೆ ತನಕ ನಾನು ಉಂಡಾಡಿ ಗುಂಡ
ನಾಳೆಯಿಂದ ನಿನ್ನ ಗಂಡ”

Roughly it translates to,

“Till yesterday, I was a bloke with no errand
But from the morrow, I am your husband”

Have had an interesting time since engagement. Trying to understand each other-which is very important. I guess I handled it pretty well by not responding to her messages, falling asleep in the middle of conversations, taking her to cartoon movies, spending lots of time in book and dvd shops completely ignoring her. In short she now has adjusted her expectations from me, which I guess is none.

So here I am standing at the brink of my bachelorhood, staring at the vast ocean of marital life awaiting the day when I’ll be pushed in to it without a life buoy to cling on to…. I guess that’s what adventure of your lifetime is all about…..

Too lazy to find an appropriate title.......

Yes, I wasn't here for some time now. I know many of you would have missed me just like we missed Himesh Reshamiyya's voice all these days. But as you know, Himesh bhai is back with his new voice and lo am here too.

So the last time I made an appearance here I was in London, doing something which I had no clue of (for that matter nobody had and has even now), content in cooking for my room mates (yeah, I am an expert cook and my ex-room mates will vouch for it albeit with a wince) and looking for where my next opportunity to get in to a embarrassing situation would come from. In short it was idyllic.


But that's a story of the past. Lot of water has flown under the bridge of my life after that. For starters, I have aged one more year and have almost reached the age where young girls no longer offer to modify your facial anatomy with the application of the tool used to aid in ambulation when you stare lecherously at them (not that I am saying I am one). Now a days girls give me the same respect as they give to someone who is a senior citizen, which means basically none.

Apart from that, I am back in India doing the same old thing here again. If you are the unfortunate ones who had to read through my earlier posts, all my esteemed peers, whom I look up to are very much there, offering their insightful and unforgettable advice to me. Got promotion and before you have the thoughts of increased pay check let me tell you that I am getting less than what I used to get before promotion. The guys in the finance must have been smoking some pretty strong stuff when they were coming up with the pay structure. And I had to do some stuff and say some things which to all others seemed pretty rational and logical, but earned me sobriquets like 'attitude problem', 'changed a lot' from the powers above. Well let me just say that sometimes the environment becomes charged up with sparks flying all over like the faulty transformer near my home.

All these put me in such a state that I had lost my writing mojo and was trying to look for inspiration to continue my contribution to the literary world. Then two things happened..

The first one was the fruit of all the prayers of my well wishers (dunno if I can call them that). At last I seem to have made some headway in to getting a better half and can say that it might not be that long where I can reminisce about the good old bachelor days. Now if that's not an inspiration to come up with pageful of paeans to all things wonderful in life, then I dunno what else is. Added to that the fact that the lady in question suffered through all my previous posts and had enough consideration to say that she liked them and asked me to write more. I ask 'What else a budding writer can look for in his future soul mate?'. 'A better taste in literature ....' some of the cynical among you might say. But I don't care.

The other thing is that a famous blogger and a world celebrity, whose comments are quoted in leading newspapers all over the world deemed it fit to grace his eyes on my humble blog and graciously left a comment in my last post. Though the comment was for the video which I had linked rather than my writing skills, I am a contented man. For someone who had to ask (read it beg) his friends to read his blog, this is indeed a momentous occasion . This as they has added a spring in my step and I am more determined than before to write.

Though I will have to get all my posts vetted by the censorship board (OK, if you don't understand this, you are still single) before hand and make sure I add a word of praise in each of them, I'll make sure you will still be regaled with all my experiences as I have more opportunities to make a complete fool of myself. You may ask am I not one now?, I feel there is still a lot of room for improvement and I am a staunch supporter of continual learning. Also the more experienced brethren whom I am gonna join will definitely agree with me, if they are permitted to do so ofcourse.....

They came calling.......

Ok.... Since I mentioned that I am about set my journey along the road of matrimony in my earlier post. I think its time to update on how far he journey has taken me.

Since the time I reached the generally accepted age of getting married, various relatives have shown considerable interest in my well-being. Any visit to the functions inadvertently led to the talks of my bachelorhood and it seemed like I was a blot on the human kind for not getting hitched and suffer like they already were.

Questions of why I haven't got married yet or if I have found someone by myself were frequently asked. My response in the negative for me finding a girl myself was always met with wide eyed disbelief as if I was going against some prophecy which was foretold at my birth( I am sure they even might have started to talk about my sexual orientation behind my back. Though nobody asked me). Then they started listing of bachelorettes who are just the one for me,extolling their virtues. By this point I would have either turned my self off to the words or would have found something very important to do.

But my relatives are a very persistant lot and determined to get me at whatever cost and one such effort bore fruit this weekend. Usually my weekends are.....umm...err... I don't have a word for staying in my room the whole day in front of my laptop, either working , watching movies or surfing the net for... erm ...interesting sites. But that's what my weekends are. So this weekend too was no different from others.

I was there sitting on my bed watching a movie when my aunt came knocking. She ordered me to come down as some one was waiting for me. Expecting my friend who usually drops in over the weekend, I went down in my PJ's and vest and with the general appearance of a hibernating bear only to encounter two people whom I have never met. My dad then introduces me to them and I realised that they were the mom and brother of a girl and I was being subjected to the ritual of 'seeing'!!!. Only that the custom is usually for the guy's folks to go and 'see' the girl. Well that's my luck for you.

Though they were taken aback by my appearance, they hid it well. There were questions to be answered. About my work, how far is my office, how much time does it take to commute, how many people work at my office (I seriously didn't understand the significance of that) and what my hobbies are. I was half expecting a request to sing and imagined myself winning them over with my impressive vocals (which had elicited a thunderous applause from my colleagues a few months back even before I had completed the first line of the song.. ok they wanted me to stop....) . But fortunately the request never came.

Then I stood there looking as lost as a gay guy in a strip joint while they completely ignored me and chatted away with my parents about mutually known relatives and who is where doing what. After about 10 minutes of this blinking in to space, I managed to escape and heave a sigh of relief.

Now I know exactly how a girl feels when a horde of people go to 'see her'. Probably there are few experiences which are more torturous than this.....

Rest assured the saga will continue...though will it end with me heading towards altar of marital bliss or not---only time will tell.

Me v/s Her.....

Regular readers of my blog (I mean all those 5-6 people whom I beg to read whenever I post my latest rant) might have noticed that I am adept (at least I like to think so) in writing about various topics and issues. But they may also have noticed that I rarely dwell upon a particular subject. A subject which you would have thought that any self respecting hot blooded single male should have in his mind at least all his waking hours (for some I know, even during their non-waking hours). Yeah you guessed it, the fairer sex.

There is a strong reason for this. Ever since I acquired logical thinking ability (now, there are mixed opinion about this, with everybody else except me telling that I can’t think at all), I realized that I cannot understand girls and also that I am a wimp.

Let me trace out my encounters with the female kind. As all stories go, it too started long long time ago and in a land far far away called childhood. Naturally being in co-ed school offered opportunities to develop your social skills and I made full use of it when I was in nursery. Couple of girls was my best friends just because their lunch box held interesting things than what my mum used to pack for me.

In primary school, there was a system of seating boys and girls side by side. And my first crush was the one who sat beside me. This was when I was in 2nd standard. Unless we were occupied in writing, we used to sit holding hands. Those were happy times. As any love story worth its salt should have a villain, the boy in the row front of us became ours. He was older, result of flunking twice and remaining in the same class. One day, as we were sitting holding hands oblivious of the whole world, he jumped upon us and exclaimed 'aaieee holding hands!!’. (Of course he had seen lot more Hindi movies than me). We stared at him defiantly and replied 'Yes'(Even we were not lagging far behind in watching Hindi movies). But our defiance was short lived as he threatened to tell our teacher and we realized quite early in life that all that they showed in movies were make believe. And definitely holding hands was not worth risking a thrashing from teacher. Well our immortal love story was short lived as she left the school at the end of the year and I discovered that playing football with a cricket ball and ruining your school shoes was cooler.

Over the course of years, my interactions with girls became less and lesser. Of course there were odd infatuations but nothing that would make me to break in to a song in the middle of the class where teacher is explaining effects of inflation on economy(no,subprime was never taught to us).

By the time I reached college, I realized that girls had become alien to me. Yeah I know you must be thinking 'What kind of a moron is he? college is the time to get on with girls and he is running away from them !!'. Well in my defense I can only say that I was the studious type who thought that talking to girls and going out with them were the past times of jerks. Yeah I am from that era. My parents knew very well that I had no hopes of impressing a girl. But nevertheless there were strict instructions from home which made my college social life as interesting as watching a live chess game on TV. What can I say, I was an obedient boy.

To make matters worse, my friends too were of the same mould. As an example here is one such incident. We were sitting in class waiting for the lecturer to come. Along comes a beautiful girl. She asks the guy who is sitting by the door as to which subject is it in next class. The guy promptly panicked and stammered that it was Sanskrit, whereas we were waiting for our zoology lecturer.

Around same time I developed this world weary cynicism and if Oxford dictionary is to be believed, developed a disposition to disbelieve in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions" and a tendency "to express this by sneers and sarcasms". Ok heavy words, but sincerely I believe that it was more of a 'Been there, Seen that, But never dare to do it' attitude.

The other important factor was my inability to understand them (but who does?). I found that what they think and what they do is always contradictory. Not all of them, but I can safely say that if put to vote, the contradictions will win a landslide victory just as Obama did.

Another aspect is their sense of humour. Yeah, most of them don’t have one. Once a girl I knew made fun of me and those present had a good laugh. But when I responded in kind, the girl sulked away and those around me gave me looks as if all the insensitivity in the world had been distilled in to me. Oye....double standards!!....that’s not cricket mate. All I can say is I have encountered only a few girls who have a terrific sense of humour and they are the ones who tolerate me.

If you are a girl and you are reading this (why?)and are offended by whatever I have said about your ilk, all I can say is it goes to prove my point. You don’t have a sense of humour.

After college, it was work and as my luck goes, the first project I landed in was a one man army thing where I was all alone. The next one was the one with shifts and as a rule no girls were hired. I had lost all the ability to interact with girls by the time I landed in a project which had some. But as time progressed, I have improved and can confidently say that I can have a conversation with a girl for a few minutes without making a complete fool of myself. I must be grateful for those girls who kept a straight face while hearing me out and laughing their heads off after I was out of their sight.

All was hunky dory until my parents and relatives decided that I have enjoyed the life enough and its time for me to get shackled in matrimony. This has put me in a state of panic. A cousin tried to provide a quantum of solace (I know the latest in movie world too) by saying 'Don’t worry, cause after marriage you wont have to talk to your wife at all. She'll do all the talking and you have to just agree to whatever she says'. Wise words of an experienced man, but I am not convinced.

Just like the career of Anil Kumble (of course I keep up with all the sports news), all good things must come to an end and I would be bidding a tearful farewell to bachelorhood. My misadventures in the quest for a perfect bride of course will make a great read to all of you. So expect more in the coming days..........